


Stare Me Down with Those Electric Eyes

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Series: Can't Catch Lightning [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, Football Player Hunk, Gen, High School is Awkward AF, Hunk is a sweetheart, Keith is #aesthetic goals, Lance is a Trombone Player, M/M, Meet-Cute, Pre-Slash, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), This is Barely Relevant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 04:01:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15283167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: “I’m just saying your crush on Hunk-the-Hunk DON’T THROW THAT AT ME, YOU JERK!” Lance shrieks when the pack of gum hits him in the face, “is cute and totally expected! Now would you get your stupid ass in the car before you freeze to death and our moms team up to gut me like a very attractive carp?”Keith glares over his shoulder at his best friend, but he does stop walking. “I don’t have a crush.”“Dude, we dated for like five minutes in eighth grade, I know what Keith-has-a-crush face looks like.”





	Stare Me Down with Those Electric Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. 
> 
> This takes place BEFORE the previous fic. This is the Meet Cute™
> 
> Several people seem to be having a rough week, a weird, week, or just a single rough day in the midst of this week, myself included (I'm feeling better now though, fanfic is good for the soul, lol). So this is dedicated to anyone who's in a funk, having a Day™, or just needed a smile. 
> 
> Without further ado, MOAR HEITH FLUFF (with a dose of Lance Friendship-is-magic McClain because I love him)

**Stare Me Down with Those Electric Eyes**

            “I’m just saying, he’s a hunk, named ‘Hunk’, and I think that’s beautiful.”

            Keith stares at Lance long and hard before nodding decisively and slamming the passenger door of Lance’s ancient blue Taurus shut and walking away.

            Lance rolls the car forward, shouting out the open window, “You can’t walk to school, Keith!”

            “I call it a one-man protest.”

            “You can’t protest a dude’s name!”

            “I can protest your shitty sense of humor!”

            “Okay, that’s just rude!”

            “I know!”

            Lance’s car may be a terrifying rustpile that’s made it’s way through every single 16 year old driver in the massive McClain family and somehow not just given up on life (Keith suspects dark sorcery, it’s the only explanation). But it can still go faster than a skinny nerd weighed down by a backpack stuffed with high school textbooks, a thick volume on astrology, and six issues of Popular Mechanics. Also a contraband butterfly knife and a small soldering iron, not that Keith would know _anything_ about that.

            “I’m just saying your crush on Hunk-the-Hunk DON’T THROW THAT AT ME, YOU JERK!” Lance shrieks when the pack of gum hits him in the face, “is cute and totally expected! Now would you get your stupid ass in the car before you freeze to death and our moms team up to gut me like a very attractive carp?”

            Keith glares over his shoulder at his best friend, but he does stop walking. “I don’t have a crush.”

            “Dude, we dated for like five minutes in eighth grade, I know what Keith-has-a-crush face looks like.” 

            Keith rolls his eyes, “We did not _date_. We held hands and pretended to make out in Nyma Astra’s bedroom because she stomped on your heart and dumped you for a lacrosse player. Who was in tenth grade and a total stoner loser, by the way.”

            “Okay, but we totally dated in kindergarten.”

            Keith shrugs, “Well yeah, totally. We were definitely going steady at five years old.”

            “You were six, buddy.”

            “Time is a construct.”

            Lance chuckles, “Sorry for teasing you about your not-crush on the football team’s resident heartthrob. I will not bring it up again; I swear on my abuela’s tamales recipe.”

            Keith narrows his eyes at him, and Lance smiles winningly while patting the passenger seat’s stained upholstery. 

            “Coooome on Keithy-Keith. Nice warm car. Not being late to calculus. Sounds way more appealing than being petty, riiiight?”

            Keith rolls his eyes but huffs and opens the door, chucking his backpack in and sliding inside.

            “You suck.”

            “I know.”

            “Worst ex-boyfriend ever.”

            “I know. What the hell are you wearing, by the way?”

            Keith tilts his head to the side, playing with the earring hanging from his right ear. “This? I made it out of paper clips.”

            “No offense, bud, but it kind of looks like a modern art piece of Dante’s Inferno.”

            “You really think so?” Keith asks, a tiny, pleased smile on his face.

            It’s Lance’s turn to roll his eyes. “And did you re-dye your hair last night?”

            “Yeah?”

            “You kind of got some, like, all over your face.”

            Keith shrugs like it’s pretty normal to have a big streak of purple arching up from his jaw towards the bridge of his nose. And it kind of is in Keith-world. The purple highlights in his hair do look good, though. He did it right, too, bleaching the chunks before putting in the dye so it wouldn’t just vanish against his natural dark mop.

            “I dig the shirt, though.”

            It’s pretty cool, an intricate star chart with a horoscope wheel over it. Keith’s gotten into astrology just like he does anything, with a single-minded passion and focus. Lance isn’t sure if Keith believes in any of it necessarily or if he’s just plain fascinated by the whole concept. He likes systems, the more intricate the better. It’s why he’s so good at Spanish grammar but gets confused whenever Lance’s cousins pull out trendy slang, despite basically living at the McClains’ house whenever his mom was gone for work. Admittedly, that’s also true for English as well.

            Keith’s wearing a big thrift store denim jacket that practically swallows his fine-boned frame. He has the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and is doodling on his arms with Sharpie while Lance draws, absentmindedly singing along Shakira’s crooning from the radio.

            “You know you’re kind of emo Luna Lovegood?” Lance observes, scanning Keith in his ripped black jeans (decorated with more doodles, these in silver Sharpie, the smaller tears mended with bright red thread), horoscope shirt and well-worn jacket.

            Keith tilts his head to the side, considering, “Yeah, I’m good with that.”

            Lance smiles fondly and reaches over to ruffle Keith’s freshly dyed hair. “As long as you’re good with it.”

            Keith just absentmindedly hums more of ‘Hips Don’t Lie’.

…

            Hunk never expected to be popular in high school. As a kid he’d known what he was – a heavy-set kid who’d rather bake and build increasingly complicated things out of Legos than play kickball with the other kids. He’d liked math and making things and the only reason he wasn’t actively bullied more was simply because he’d always towered over the other kids in his class – his size working in his favor for once. But words hurt and not being included stings.

            He’d kind of expected more of the same when he got to high school, honestly. But then football happened and it turns out when the whole goal is to protect your teammates and the main things they look for in players is loyalty and strength, Hunk is actually pretty good at the athletic thing.

            And he enjoys it, which is weird to think about. All the teen movies he’s seen have kind of made playing football out to be the ultimate gateway to becoming a Popular Asshole™, but for the most part he likes his team, and he likes the game. Some of the guys are there hoping for scholarships, and some are there because they want to make their-dad-who-played-the-Good-ol-Game proud, and some are just there to run around and tackle people. He figures there are going to be people he doesn’t like everywhere he goes, but at least here the people he likes outnumber the people he doesn’t.

            He’d almost said no to football.  He’d almost not tried out at all.  But walking to his first meeting of engineering and robotics club in ninth grade he’d nearly smashed in the face as a door flew open and a small body launched itself out into the hallway, crashing face-first into his chest, yelling about misogynistic assholes, and this is why there are barely any women in STEM and you fuckers couldn’t make a battery out of a potato!

            Of course Hunk had blurted out “But that’s so easy!” just in time for a tiny, irate girl to round on him, fists clenched.

            “You got something to add, buddy?” she’d snarled at him and Hunk had decided this pint-sized person was going to be his first high school friend. Or he might not survive to graduation.

            When Pidge had quit engineering/robotics club a week later in protest of the club president’s blatant, near-cartoon-villain-level sneering disregard for her work or opinions, Hunk had followed after her. Straight into football try-outs.

            Now Pidge was the one of two female players on the team (the other being Allura Altea, senior class president, head of nearly every committee on the planet, possibly an alien princess masquerading as a hyper-competent human being) and one of the best kickers in Castleton High history. Admittedly, pretty much any other player on the team, including Allura, could probably pick Pidge up and physically throw _her_ into the goal, but they probably _wouldn’t_ , if they didn’t absolutely _have_ to.

            (That was a big fat lie, last year one of the then-seniors, a big guy named Antok, had picked Pidge, then a sophomore and still five-foot-nothing, up and chucked her over to the ball, which she picked up and ran with until she scored a possibly-illegal touch-down.)

            Now they were juniors, and Takeshi “Call me Shiro” Shirogane and Allura were co-captains…or something? Hunk wasn’t sure how that worked, other than someone needed to check Allura’s authority quickly or he was pretty sure she’d overthrow the principal in a bloodless revolution and simply run the school as a benevolent dictatorship. As far as Hunk was concerned, that was broadly fine, but seemed like it would probably result in some problems when she finally graduated and went to Harvard or something.

            Anyway, Hunk was a football player. And the one thing that high school movies seemed to get right is that a certain level of popularity seemed to come with the title of ‘football player’, even though it baffles him on a fundamental level. Which would be cool (yay! Not getting bullied!) except for The Boy.

            The Boy, whose name is Keith, is a constant, peripheral presence in Hunk’s life and he’s slowly driving him crazy. Keith is the kind of cool that isn’t ‘cool’. He’s one of those rare authentic people who’s just a little different and doesn’t give a shit if his aesthetic doesn’t match anyone else’s. He wears clothes he found in thrift stores and novelty shops and he reads books on obscure topics and makes his own jewelry out of bits of metal and plastic most people would throw away.

            He’s gorgeous and most of the student body ignores him or talks about him behind his back.

            Hunk has kind of a massive crush on him.

            Because their building school is too small (overcrowded, thanks American school system) to give every student a full-sized locker, they each have a small half-locker stacked on top of another small half-locker. Meaning the unlucky jerk with the bottom locker had better hope their top-shelf locker ‘buddy’ isn’t the kind who takes all day getting their stuff out before class. Hunk, as one of the lucky half of the school to get an ‘above’ locker, tries to be considerate of the person whose locker sits below his. Emphasis on ‘tries’. Because no matter what, he always seems to embarrass himself the handful of times he and his locker buddy happen to be in the same space.

            You would think their encounters would be more frequent considering…well…high school. But Hunk’s locker neighbor is a.) gorgeous and b.) some kind of cryptid because it’s only once in a blue moon that they ever see each other. Of course, the handful of times they have run into each other it’s always ended with Hunk being awkward and painfully embarrassing because his locker buddy is KEITH, otherwise known as _The Boy_ , who is beautiful and different and probably doesn’t have time for awkward football players who still don’t completely understand how they managed to become kind of sort of ‘cool’. Considering point a plus Hunk’s own anxiety, point b is probably a blessing in the grand scheme of things.

            Case in point, today. Keith is crouched on the ground in front of his locker and he’s just as pretty as ever. His dark hair, which had been sporting fire-engine-red highlights for the past few weeks (four, four weeks, Hunk has been keeping track in the back of his mind like a sad and creepy stalker), is now streaked with purple. There’s even a stripe of residue marking an endearing path up the side of the other boy’s face and he has a new earring swinging from one ear. It looks like a miniature modern art piece. If modern art was made out of paperclips and hung from someone’s ear. Which, considering everything Hunk, an engineer by preference, has ever heard about modern art, could, conceivably be a thing.

            How would he know?

            He might be a little bit hypnotized by the gentle sway of the maybe-modern-art-paper-clip-earring-thing or maybe he’s distracted by the light sweep of shadow as his locker buddy’s freshly purpled hair drifts over his forehead. But ultimately Hunk has only himself to blame for what happens next.

            He opens his locker, not remembering what a mess it normally is, not remembering anything, maybe not even his own name. Hunk Garrett? Never met him. His worldview has narrowed down to a misshapen twist of silver swaying against the lean line of a pale throat and the soft curl of dark purple locks over the collar of a vintage denim jacket.

            This is, of course, when a tree’s worth of scrap paper (old assignments, notes, miscellaneous designs he’s sketched out and not had the materials to build) come loose all at once, startling Hunk into fumbling his notebooks, sending a pile of loose-leaf notepaper and handouts haphazardly stuffed into his notebooks sliding down like a landslide of graphite and college-rule.

            A landslide right onto one lovely purple and black head.

            Well, shit.

            A pair of highly offended indigo eyes shoot up to lock with his and Hunk kind of just wants the earth to swallow him whole, except he’s totally standing right next to Keith-too-cool-for-Hunk’s-kultzy-ness Kogane and he’d just get sucked into Hunk’s personal sinkhole and oh shit Keith’s talking now.

            “Seriously?” he says, raising one dark eyebrow.

            “Um. Sorry?” Good job, Hunk, real smooth. “Do you want some chocolate?”

            “No.”

            “You don’t like chocolate?”

            “Not really.”

            “Oh.”

            Now they’re staring at each other and it’s only like the fifth most awkward thing on the face of planet earth, and the only reason Hunk doesn’t place it first is because he knows somewhere someone is watching re-runs of ‘The Office’ and that show is like a televised case of second hand embarrassment.

            Hunk can’t even be in the same room as that show. Geez. It’s like they just wanted every anxious human being on the planet to just pass out from emotional exhaustion by the end of season 1.

            Luckily the late bell rings and they have to separate. Hunk watches Keith’s retreating back. He’s wearing a different jacket than usual today. “Uh. Nice coat!” Hunk’s mouth calls after Keith for him because sometimes his common sense and human brain decide to completely depart from his flesh prison.

            Keith looks over his shoulder at him, dark brows pulling together contemplatively, “It doesn’t look how it should yet,” he says, “it’s a work in progress.”

            “Oh. Uh. Looks good. On you, though.” Hunk stutters because Hunk doesn’t know when to quit.

            Keith tips his head to the side like he can’t figure him out. Which is really funny, really, because Hunk’s an open book. Keith’s like an ancient puzzle box guarded by an Indiana-Jones-adventure-level series of mazes and traps. “Thanks. I guess.”

            “No problem, buddy,” Hunk tops _that_ disaster of a sentence off with a dorky little wave.

            A wave that a still-perplexed-looking Keith awkwardly copies while walking away backwards, like he needs to keep an eye on Hunk.

            The late bell rings while Hunk’s still watching the hole in the crowd where Keith disappeared.

            He has to scramble to gather his fallen notes and rush to class without bothering to shove the mess into his backpack.

            Yeah, he’s got this whole cool-popular-jock-guy thing down.

…

            Lance is eating lunch in the band room because he’s a certified Band Geek™ (he says it with such emphasis Keith can’t help but imagine a trademark symbol, probably bedazzled if Lance had anything to do with it, hovering next to the title). Also because if another wannabe-cool-kid calls Lance ‘Tromboner’ in the lunch room one more time Keith is gonna cut a bitch.

            Keith is sitting next to him, picking the raisins out of his trail mix because they freak them both out.

            “We need to meet someone who likes raisins,” Lance says for the fiftieth time, chewing his Marshmallow Fluff and Nutella sandwich contemplatively (it’s total contraband, his mom won’t let him keep either in the house, they’re too full of sugar for her to condone her children eating it in place of something with actual nutritional value, but Keith’s fine with stashing Lance’s weird sandwich ingredients because what’s the point of knowing someone since toddlerhood if you don’t help them out when they need it?).

            Keith shrugs and keeps sorting trail mix. The raisins are exiled to the corner of the piece of notebook paper Keith has spread out for this purpose. Lance takes the almonds, Keith the peanuts and cashews. The M&Ms are Lance’s; Keith doesn’t like chocolate. Sometimes he’ll pick the candy coating off of the red ones and eat that, but he always looks pensive and unsatisfied when he does.

            His denim jacket is off, spread across his lap.

            “I talked to him today,” Keith says out of nowhere. His fingers, restless now that that trail mix is dealt with, pick at the seams of his new denim jacket.

            “Who?” Lance’s cheeks, stuffed with almonds and M&Ms, puff out like a chipmunk’s.

            “Hunk.”

            Lance nearly chokes on his mouthful of almonds and knock off chocolate. “WHAT. And you didn’t tell _me,_ your _BEE-EFF-EFFEST-BFF-IN-THE-WORLD_ until _NOW_?”

            Keith gives him a blank stare. “Are you done?”

            Lance huffs and rolls his eyes dramatically. “Am I done? No. Can’t stop, won’t stop Keithers.”

            Keith rolls his eyes. “I think I might embroider something on my new jacket.”

            “Babes, that thing is older than you are,” Lance reminds him dryly, “You bought a genuine antique.”

            “Your face is a genuine antique,” Keith mutters, “and it’s cool.”

            “Doc Martens are cool. That’s just old.”

            “Hunk said it looked good.”

            Lance’s face splits into a huge, shit-eating grin, “Oooooh, he dooooes, does he?”

            Keith sticks his tongue out at him. “You suck.”

            “And yet you still let me eat half your trail mix.”

            “Old habits die hard.”

            “So, are you gonna see him again?”

            “It was a compliment, not a date,” Keith reminds him dryly.

            Lance rolls his eyes, “Still more than I’m getting, dude.”

            Keith gives him a big-eyed sad look like he’s feeling feelings on Lance’s behalf and they’re sad feelings but Keith’s not quite able to translate them into something resembling words of reassurance.

            Lance throws the empty plastic bag from his sandwich at Keith’s stupid sad-face. “I know, I know, it’ll get better. Just let me live vicariously through you, you football-player-seducing-Casanova, you.”

            Keith rolls his eyes and gives Lance an exquisitely dry look through his bangs. “Casanova was bi, Lance. I’m just gay.”

            Lance is of course taking a sip of orange juice when Keith deadpans this gem and inhales a bunch of citrus through his sinuses. He chokes, completely undignified, and has to wheeze out a less than witty retort. “Oh my god, you’re like the emo stormcloud at the end of the rainbow.”

            Keith clicks his fingers together like something’s just occurred to him, “I’m gonna embroider the original cover of ‘The War of the Worlds’ on the back of it.”

            “Okay…”

            “But _RAINBOW._ ”

            “Okay, Keith, that’s…okay.” 

…

            Hunk didn’t mean to get his stuff locked in Mr. Smythe’s classroom. He really didn’t. (Honestly, who intentionally does this stuff? Why does the school administration always look at him like he’s the shiftiest person on planet earth when he asks to get a classroom unlocked because oh, hey, he accidentally left his backpack behind?)

            But here he is, in the school hallway outside the science classroom after football practice, staring at a hand-lettered sign taped to the door.

            _My dear fellow science explorers on this journey of knowledge!_

_Unfortunately, circumstances beyond my control have drawn me away for the afternoon. School policy states that I must, tragically, lock my door when no one is in the classroom. While knowledge cannot be contained, volatile chemicals, unfortunately, must be. If anyone needs access to this room, contact our friendly local building project manager, Mr. Sendak._

Friendly, HA. Sendak is about as friendly as a Megalodon shark.

            Well, he’s screwed.

            Hunk sighs and rests his forehead against the door, weighing the pros and cons of just breaking down the door. Pro, he’d have his backpack and could actually do his homework. Con, probably detention until he dies.

            “Uh, do you need some help?”

            Hunk’s head snaps up and he whips around to look at Keith, who’s standing there, hands shoved into oversized jacket pockets, staring at him with his head tipped to the side, paperclip earring resting just under his jaw. He’s wearing a necklace made out of individual links of bicycle chain, with a pendant made of copper wire and a warped fender washer hanging directly below the hollow of his throat. Hunk hadn’t noticed that before. The fender washer looks like it’s had designs engraved on it but Hunk’s too far away to see what they are.

            “Yeah, my stuff’s locked in Coran’s classroom. Um, Mr. Smythe, I mean. Cor-Mr. Smythe, lets me and Pidge work on projects in there during lunch and study hall. But I had practice today and left my stuff and now it’s locked in.”

            “What kind of projects?” Keith asks, blinking his purple-grey eyes slowly. They look even more purple today. Hunk wonders if it’s the new highlights.

            Hunk gives him a smile because Hunk loves talking about this stuff and he really likes Keith and Keith _asked_ so screw it, “We’re building a robot! We’re calling it ‘Rover’ and it’s super cool!”

            Keith doesn’t ask why Hunk and Pidge are building a robot on their own and not with the designated robotics/engineering clubs. He just blinks and says “What does Rover do?”

            “He plays fetch and Frisbee and shakes hands so far.” Hunk is relieved. He hates explaining how the robotics and engineering clubs treated Pidge. He hates thinking about the way they’d looked at him. Like he was the dumb fat kid. Or the dumb muscle.

            “You’re making a robot dog?” Keith’s whole body perks up like this is amazing news and Hunk hadn’t really thought of it that way but based on what they’ve ‘taught’ Rover to do so far…they might actually be making a robot dog.

            “He doesn’t really look like a dog, but…kind of?” Hunk rubs the back of his neck, “We’re trying to teach him to recognize our voices next. But the programming’s really hard and Pidge is the software expert, not me. I’m a hardware guy.”

            Keith taps a nail (they’re painted black with little dots of red on them like polka dots) against his fender washer pendant, slight smile on his face, “I like making things too.”

            Hunk grins because here’s someone who gets it. He totally admires Pidge and what she can create but…at the end of the day he wants to feel the pieces of something in his hands and see them come together to make something new in front of him. He can’t manage to get that same satisfaction from numbers on a screen.

            “Do you – oh.”

            “What?”

            Hunk laughs, “I almost asked if you wanted to meet Rover but,” Hunk hooks a thumb at the door behind him, “He’s kind of in robo-jail right now.”

            Keith blinks. He’s wearing eyeliner. That’s…neat.

            “I can help with that.”

            And that’s how Hunk ends up leaning over Keith’s shoulder as the other boy fishes a pair of bobby pins out of his enormous jacket’s pockets and starts picking the lock on the classroom door.

            “Do…I even want to know why you learned to do that?”            

            “To impress cute boys.”

            “I mean, it’s useful and all but…what.”

            Keith flicks a glance over his shoulder. “You heard me.”

            Hunk’s pretty sure he’s roughly the same color as a tomato right now. “Oh, um, uh,” he’s stuttering, super, “Well, if it counts, I’m totally impressed right now.”

            Keith gives him a sly grin over his shoulder just in time for the lock to snap open. “That’s the whole point. Impressing the cute boy.”

            Hunk’s not sure what kind of Twilight Zone he’s slipped into…but…he’s really into it.

…

            The next day at school they have what Pidge would later call ‘A Breakfast Club Moment’. Like at the end of the movie ‘The Breakfast Club’ when one of the kids asks if all their bonding in detention would matter the Monday after, at school. Hunk and Keith lock eyes in front of their locker. Keith’s wearing a crushed red velvet blazer over a pale pink t-shirt modeled off of the one from the original ‘Footloose’ movie that says ‘Dance Your Ass Off’. The two ‘s’s in ‘Ass’ are covered by cartoon donkey stickers. He’s also wearing brown plaid pants with thin red stripes over black Doc Martens because Keith is a brave soul.

            Hunk is wearing an autumn-leaf yellow t-shirt and grey-green cargo pants because he’s not the fashion pioneer Keith is.

            There’s some kind of unspoken moment where Keith’s face falters, as if he’s registering a rejection Hunk hasn’t had a chance to give yet. His head tilts down, purple hair sliding over his eyes and Hunk wants to catch the past and bring it back to the present just so Keith doesn’t look like that anymore.

            “Thanks for helping me out yesterday,” he blurts out before Keith can crouch down to his locker.

            Keith freezes and peers up at him, a curious light in his stormcloud eyes.

            “And for being so interested in Rover.” You have to give before you receive, his grandmother used to tell him and his sisters. When it comes to people, you can’t just expect them to open up. You have to offer a little bit of yourself first so they know you can be trusted with a little bit of them in return. “Not many people are”

            “Why not?” Keith blurts out, head snapping up, “He’s a robot dog!”

            “Not exactly dog-shaped. …Or very cute,” Hunk admits.

            “He’s adorable,” Keith smiles in a way that hints at an unspoken ‘so are you’.

            But it’s a little early for that, Hunk thinks. This is new and fragile. For now he sticks with, a warm “Thanks, Keith,” that has Keith’s face flooding with color, pink like his rebellious shirt.

            It’s a start.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title and series title from 'Lightning' by Alex Goot. 
> 
> P.S. In case anyone is Concerned, I will eventually get back to True Love or Something. I'm just playing around with some other ships and AUs for a bit!


End file.
